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Tuesday, April 05, 2011

A Day in the Life of Chicago

"Tomorrow Never Knows" came to mind while I was filming Cloud Gate. Genius! The World's Easiest Video. Then I thought of adding other video pieces from my trip to Chicago that did not fit. At the same time I (also) decided to add Beatles songs that (also) did not fit together. Or fit with the video pieces. And my computer crashed trying to sort it all out. Twice. So never have I experienced such a (tragically) high inspiration to execution ratio.

3 comments:

Ok, so this is really really great -- seriously, very good. Next time don't tell us your tortured process and all the near-ruinings, just show us the piece. This is cool.

Favorite video clip of all time is the sequence with the varius shots of the slowed down water cannon projectiles. That's just awesome, and the music (as mixed by you) was perfect! Well done.

Cloud gate. Ok even this was nice. I'm just going to leave it there. We all know my feelings on Cloud Gate -- but this was really well done and shows it off very nicely. Did I just say that out loud?...

My only criticism is purely a mock criticism -- and that is, you are the first artist in the history of the world to use the ENDING OF ALL ENDINGS, the crescendo and monster piano cord with the 1:07 fade out (or whatever) from A Day In The Life, NOT TO END YOUR PIECE WITH, but rather to serve as s pseudo ending so can really end it with a vamped up ending of Eleanor Rigby. I mean FIRST, EVER. Anyone who can prove me wrong gets five bucks. So anyway, well done on that front too.

Your criticism, mock or otherwise, is ironic. I told Juli that though I was frustrated beyond measure trying to figure out how to put this thing together, the ONE thing I thought was a stroke of genius was....drum roll....the ending. For precisely the reasons you gave. I agree with your asssessment of A Day in the Life as containing the ENDING OF ALL ENDINGS, which therefore made it a challenge for me to tack on a coda. Much as no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, no one would expect any music after that final chord. I love this piece of vocal-free instrumentation for Eleanor Rigby (one of my faves, in any event) from the Beatles Anthology; it's just SO freakin' plaintive. And I thought that this slow motion clip of people walking conveyed some of the same deep ennui. I couldn't be happier how seamlessly (in my opinion) those strings emerge from the piano chord.

For what it's worth, before the computer crashed I originally had the big symphonic crescendo (what George Martin called an "orchestral orgasm") TWICE in the piece. The first time I ommitted the final chord (GASP!) and made that moment of anticipation the segue for other music. Then I ended it in the way I did here.